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Genesis 2:24

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Hey Y'all

I've been doing a lot of study over the past few years, starting with the issue of divorce. A few years ago I thought divorce was *the* major problem in the church today. Well, I sure learned different. It turned out that divorce was related to the issue of polygyny, but I didn't understand how for a long time. That led to the issue of how the claim that polygyny is sinful causes words like lust, fornication and adultery are used to describe concepts that flat out don't exist in the Bible. One of the interesting rabbit-trails was the issue of female-female sexual contact, which an Orthodox priest told me was the real reason why polygyny wasn't allowed by the church (Leviticus 18:17-18 is part of the incest statutes, it isn't the husband committing incest, it's the wives, ergo- the Law presumes some sexual contact between wives).

That tidbit led to a study of the history of the church's doctrines on sex and marriage and I discovered a gold mine with Brundage's book "Law, Sex and Christian Society In Medieval Europe." Seriously, that book completely explains where all the anti-poly stuff comes from, as well as the "sex doesn't make you married" and "you aren't married until you have a ceremony" doctrines.

Eventually all this led me to study Genesis 2:24, which is the law concerning marriage. That is an eye-opening study, let me tell you. The authority to marry was given to the man (not the church or state) and the man marries a woman by having sex with her (confirmed by Exodus 22:16-17 and Deut. 22:28-29), which is why there is no prohibition anywhere in the Bible on a man having sex with a woman he is eligible to marry (except for the restriction on having sex with whores in 1st Cor. 6:15-16). So, sex makes you married and the guy who gets a woman's virginity is her husband whether it was a publicly agreed on thing, a seduction or a rape. She's married and her consent isn't required. If she's not a virgin and not married, her consent is necessary (1st Cor. 7:39) but the fact is that if a guy has sex with her and she doesn't consent to marry him then they aren't married and it isn't a sin.

That one causes Christians everywhere to come unglued.

Genesis 2:24 says what it says, but there are two things that it doesn't say which are relevant to the folks here. The first was pointed out by Christ in Matthew 19:3-6. The Pharisees asked what the grounds for divorce were and Jesus quoted Genesis 2:24, then said "so they are no longer two, but one flesh. What therefore God has joined together let no man separate." In other words, there are no grounds for divorce. The Pharisees said "Oh yeah? Well why did Moses tell us to divorce our wives?"

Jesus corrected them, saying "For the hardness of your hearts Moses *permitted* you to divorce your wives" (this is the critical point) "but from the beginning it has not been that way." See that? Jesus is pointing to the fact that Genesis 2:24 is the authorization for the man to marry, but that grant of authority DOES NOT contain the authority to terminate the marriage. However, because they'd brought up Moses, Jesus then explained what Moses meant by "indecency" in Deuteronomy 24:1, saying that the only allowed reason for divorce was immorality. That agrees with Matthew 5:31-32.

So, Jesus is pointing out that what Genesis 2:24 DIDN'T say was important (no authority to divorce) and that should point to the fact that it also didn't contain any limitation on how many times a man initiated marriage. In other words, no restriction as to the number of wives. We check to see if Scripture backs that up and we find that God regulated polygyny in the Law, He condoned it (2nd Samuel 12:8), He commanded it (levirate marriage- Deut. 25:5-10) and according to Jeremiah 31:31-32 God had two wives. So, looks like that one is set in stone.

Everybody likes to claim that the "shall leave, shall cleave and shall become one flesh" in Genesis 2:24 represents leaving, having the ceremony (getting married) and THEN becoming one flesh. That's wrong and Jesus said so. The man leaves and cleaves, God is the one who makes them become one flesh. When does He do that? When the man cleaves to his wife and consummates the marriage. So, "shall become one flesh" is an imperative, which means it's happened, it won't change. Same thing with Deut. 22:29 and the "shall become his wife." It isn't something that happens in the future, it's the same as "shall become one flesh" and it happened when the guy took her virginity. They are married and there's no way around that.

The church *really* hates this.

The passage in Malachi 2 is interesting to parse because from the reference to godly offspring (which is a reference to Leviticus 21:13-15) it appears that the men were ditching the wife of their youth in order to make way for a woman who was not a virgin. In other words, a divorced woman. In doing so they were divorcing their wives illegitimately (the wives were not unfaithful) and that was treachery both for the illegitimate divorce and for the fact the men could have taken a second wife and continued to honor the first wife.

The problem is a woman is married to the man who gets her virginity. Period. Think about the implications of that and you'll understand why this is such a hot-button topic. According to the CDC, in the general population only about 5% of the population are virgins when they get married. According to some Baptist organization's polls, amongst "highly religious groups" up to 20% of the folks getting married are virgins. That means if you look around your church somewhere between 8 and 9 out of 10 of the couples aren't actually married to each other, they're living together in adultery. If you think trying to talk about polygyny is bad, try discussing the implications of "yes, sex does make you married."

There are three ways out of that unintentional marriage, but only one that works 100% of the time, which is Numbers 30:5 in which her father annuls the marriage in the day he hears of it (illustrated in Exodus 22:16-17 and implied in Deut. 22:28-29 if they are not discovered). That's because the father's authority to annul any vow, agreement or even the rash words out of her lips with binding obligations, while she is a youth living in his house, is unlimited and there is no time limit on it, he can do so in the day he hears of it and learns of the obligations.

So... didn't marry a virgin? Better have her call her daddy, confess what she did and ask him to forgive her and forbid her marriage to the guy she gave her virginity to. If her father is no longer around, then hope the guy wasn't a Christian (Christians married to Christians are forbidden to divorce, no exceptions, 1st Cor. 7:10-11). If he'd not a Christian he can give her a certificate of divorce for adultery. If that's a no-go, if he's not a Christian and he refuses to live with her, provide for her and husband her, she's free of him (1st Cor 7:15).

Anyway, anything and everything related to sex and marriage is rooted in Genesis 2:24, either directly in what it says or indirectly in what it doesn't say. If anyone is interested, I prepared a chart that has the complete exegesis of Genesis 2:24, along with an explanation of how the church "developed" the doctrines we have today. It covers both polygyny and divorce, as well as the issue of the unintentional marriages resulting from the church preaching their "sex doesn't make you married" doctrine.

This is about a 12 MB .jpg (a rather large file). It works best to save it to disk and look at it with something like the windows photo viewer. As one of my friends has pointed out, it has something there to offend just about everyone and just because God's Word allows something doesn't mean you have to do it.

https://artisanaltoadshall.files.wordpr ... large4.jpg
 
I look forward to reading the chart. Just to clarify though, are you saying that there is a way to have sex and not be married or commit adultery? I agree that sex is either a marriage or an adultery and there is no need for church or government to be involved at all. It seemed like you were saying a woman could consent to sex but not a marriage though.
 
ZecAustin - I read it to say that a man can have sex with a woman who is not a virgin, and it not be considered adultery. In this case, the argument is that marriage is not required either.
 
Eristhophanes, I do congratulate you on being willing to do such a detailed study, and go wherever scripture takes you. This is excellent to see. I have a few points of disagreement, which I'll outline below for you to ponder, but don't let that detract from the fact that I am glad to see you doing this study and, in general, feel that the position you have come to is a lot more in accordance with scripture than that presented by the majority of the church.
Eristhophanes said:
the man marries a woman by having sex with her (confirmed by Exodus 22:16-17 and Deut. 22:28-29), which is why there is no prohibition anywhere in the Bible on a man having sex with a woman he is eligible to marry (except for the restriction on having sex with whores in 1st Cor. 6:15-16). So, sex makes you married and the guy who gets a woman's virginity is her husband whether it was a publicly agreed on thing, a seduction or a rape. She's married and her consent isn't required. If she's not a virgin and not married, her consent is necessary (1st Cor. 7:39) but the fact is that if a guy has sex with her and she doesn't consent to marry him then they aren't married and it isn't a sin.
Two key points to discuss here:
1 Sex makes you married
2 Can you have sex outside marriage without sinning

1 Sex makes you married:
Marriage does not only involve sex. You have already pointed out that some form of consent is required in some circumstances. Why would consent be required in some instances but not others? In my reading, marriage has two elements - sex, and covenant (or "consent", but covenant is more correct). These are always present. Ideally:
A: Covenant - Man agrees with woman's father, or the woman herself, to marry her. Betrothal.
B: Sex - Man and woman come together, consummate the marriage. Now they are married.

That's ideal. When sex occurs first, the order is simply reversed, both are still required. I'll label the below passage by underlining the parts relating to covenant, and bolding the parts relating to sex:
Exodus 22:16-17 said:
If a man seduces a virgin who is not betrothed and lies with her, he shall give the bride-price for her and make her his wife. If her father utterly refuses to give her to him, he shall pay money equal to the bride-price for virgins.
In other words, if a man has sex with a virgin first, he then has to covenant with her father to marry her. Only by doing this also can he "make her his wife". Both elements are necessary. And the father has full ability to refuse. So sex alone did not make them married.

Sex SHOULD lead to marriage. But it does not necessarily. If some criminal bastard rapes your daughter, she's not his wife, unless you decide he's actually somewhat decent and decide to let them marry.

I outline this in more detail in my own booklet available here, I'd encourage you to read it and consider it. I'm not claiming it's perfect - but it's been reviewed by a lot of people, revised a lot, and I'm pretty comfortable now with the general thrust of it.
https://www.dropbox.com/s/e9uxw32i7hc9f ... b.pdf?dl=0

2: Can you have sex outside marriage without sinning
Yes, I agree this is a very touchy subject! Good on you raising it though, we all need to chew over these difficult issues, as this is a critical one for many people's lives since they've already done this more than once...

I must agree that the levitical laws do not forbid sex with non-virgins. I also come to this conclusion in my own booklet I just linked to. But that does not mean that it is ok to go around sleeping with them. Obviously sleeping with prostitutes is clearly prohibited, as you've already pointed out. But we also have 'lasciviousness", "wantonness" or "promiscuity" (depending on the translation) prohibited in multiple places, e.g.
Romans 13:13 said:
Let us walk honestly, as in the day; not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering [sex] and wantonness [promiscuity], not in strife and envying.
There is a temptation to read the Levitical laws, see that this isn't technically banned there, and decide it is ok to sleep around. Jude even prophesied that this would occur. We must not take the liberty we have in a true understanding of scripture and turn it into an excuse for our own lusts:
Jude 1:4 said:
For there are certain men crept in unawares, who were before of old ordained to this condemnation, ungodly men, turning the grace of our God into lasciviousness, and denying the only Lord God, and our Lord Jesus Christ.
So yes, I do think that someone can have sex outside marriage, in some very limited circumstances, without technically breaching the laws in Torah. But, we are later forbidden from taking advantage of this. So this is good to know when looking at our past, and at the lives of others, to work out what people have to repent from. Understanding these technicalities helps us to prioritise what things in life are most critical to raise awareness of and change first, and what things can be left for YHWH to convict people of later. We shouldn't actually take advantage of this ourselves.

I have other points I could make, but these are the two fundamentals I thought most important to raise first.

Good idea with that big graphic, I haven't actually managed to go through it all properly yet, I just like how you've tried to put everything together in a graphical form. Two initial points:
- Best to delete the three topless ladies. Yes, Torah doesn't actually condemn toplessness either - but they mean people will start reading it already offended by it and won't consider the content in an unemotive fashion. The content's offensive enough. The ladies are counterproductive.
- Technical suggestion: Save it in .pdf format ideally, or if it must be an image, .png rather than .jpg. It's massive yet still has fuzzy text simply because you're using the wrong format. Jpeg is designed for photos, not text, and does a terrible job of rendering text. This should drop to a few kb in .pdf format. Of course, just saving into a different format won't work if your underlying document has been made by clipping together .jpg images into a big one, but will work if your text is actually "text" in the document you saved this from.
 
I agree, there's something there to offend everyone!

Ditto like everything FollowingHim said. I like what you are doing, but I don't think it will get through to a portion of your intended audience with nudity and F-bombs.

The soundness of your logic and exposition are going to fall on deaf ears if at a glance it appears to be the wishful thinking of a degenerate.

I don't think that, but my wife might! I'm already on board (and as red pill as they come), but if you want to reach honest thinking people with over-strict sexual morals, I think it would be best to not give them a valid excuse to dismiss you without having looked at your hard work. And nudity/foul language would be seen as a very valid reason.

"All things are lawful, but not all things are profitable. All things are lawful, but not all things edify."

"For though I am free from all men, I have made myself a slave to all, so that I may win more. To the Jews I became as a Jew, so that I might win Jews; to those who are under the Law, as under the Law though not being myself under the Law, so that I might win those who are under the Law; to those who are without law, as without law, though not being without the law of God but under the law of Christ, so that I might win those who are without law.…"
 
I've beat this dead horse back to life and dead again in another post so I will only recap here, but the law against sleeping with prostitutes makes it clear that you are marrying her. It uses the exact same language. There are two ways to make a marriage, a covenant or sex. Remember it was considered adultery to sleep with another man's fiancee and if a man seduced a virgin he had married her, he had no choice not to covenant at that point. The girl's father could just nullify it.

The case of a non-virgin may seem murky but she's either free to remarry, in which case the sex makes a marriage, or not, in which case you've committed adultery. I would be very careful about teaching there is any case where sex happens outside of marriage. You're either mKing one or breaking one.
 
ZecAustin, would you mind sharing a link to the other post you referenced?
 
I will look for it although I'm loathe to being it back up as I lost my temper and spoke in an un-Christ like manner.
 
No worries then, ZecAustin. I was just curious to read your thoughts. No need in bringing up something you would prefer to let lie.
 
It would be great if you could link to it Zec, it's so easy to have the same conversations over and over again otherwise.
 
Ah, yes, I remember now. That one did get a bit argumentative didn't it... :D But the great thing is that here we are all talking to each other still!
Anyone particularly interested in this can delve through that thread, ignore the tone, pick out the key points and scriptures, and judge for themselves.
This is an issue that could probably benefit from a succinct, calm and balanced presentation of both perspectives side-by-side, with no conclusion reached, for people to read and consider for themselves. Maybe something for a couple of us to sit down and do in person sometime, would be the most efficient way. Shame I'm not often over your way to work through it with you, I'd enjoy that.
 
Something I would add to your two conditions, FH: I always count a third condition to make a marriage. Eligibility. A man who has sex with a woman, but they are ineligible for marriage to one another, is not married to her. This would include a married woman, as in the case of adultery, but also any of the cases listed in Leviticus 18.

I believe this is an important point because I have actually had young women who were victims of sexual abuse by a family member, distraught with guilt because someone told them they had to remain without a husband. As if they were "married in God's eyes" to their family member.

So my three conditions are: eligibility, covenant, and consummation.

Incidentally, this is also another example of the presence of sex with an absence of marriage. Sex on its own does not equal marriage.
 
Thank you ZecAustin. I look forward to reading through it, and no worries, I will read over any tone that you are concerned about.
 
Jason, that is a very good way to put it. Because it is generally lack of eligibility that makes sex sinful (adultery, incest etc). I'll ponder that one further, that is an essential concept that I've generally just taken as inherently assumed, but haven't spelled out in that simple way before. Thankyou.
 
Keep in mind that ineligibility didn't constitute a marriage because it resulted in death. So no, they weren't married. Or at least not for very long.
 
Death was not the prescribed punishment in every case. And to suggest that God both thinks an act is a vile sin, but also a blessed union, is intellectually dishonest. It cannot be both. To suggest to victims of rape by their own family that God says they are married to their own father or brother or relative and must stay with him, must be his wife, must perform as a wife for him, until the day that he dies, is sick and a complete perversion of what God has shown a marriage to be. You suggest that God has determined that a girl must give her body to her own family member or else is sinning.

Sex simply does not equal a marriage without the other two factors. Fornication is a real thing that exists.

The laws about oaths also bear out this truth. As you said, if a man seduces a virgin he was obligated to take her as a wife. But her father could nullify his obligation. As the laws on oaths tell us, a woman's father can nullify her vows as long as she is not married. If she is married, her husband only has that authority, not her father. Therefore, the former virgin in this scenario is not yet married simply because of the sex. There was no covenant, and the father disallows it. The man never becomes her husband.

I will admit that I have not read the other post, so I apologize if I'm restating something already said. I also hope I don't seem to have a tone. My wife says I often do. I don't want to come off harshly, or contribute to anything causing bad riffs. I have read plenty from you, Zec, and respect your thoughts.
 
The father with the seduced virgin is a powerful argument that sex does equal marriage. Remember that the father has to actively annul the marriage on the day he learns of it or it stands. There was no covenant. There is no mention of there being a covenant but there is still a binding marriage if the father doesn't object. He doesn't have to communicate his acceptance. He simply doesn't respond and the marriage stands. There is no covenant but there is a marriage.

I was being facetious about prohibited unions resulting in a marriage until the execution occurs. It was a little bit of absurdity to illustrate a point. What prohibited sex relationships didn't result in death and where is fornication in the Bible? Everywhere I see fornication it occurs in the New Testament and is the word porneia and means "prohibited sex acts." It is definitely plural and has to refer back to the Old Testament to have any meaning. So where does the idea of sex but no marriage occurr?

Samuel, I say let's work on this. We should be able to do it over email and chat. It's obviously an important issue that there are many questions about.
 
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